AMD Zen Core processors are expected to be shipped by the end of the year but they could be priced at a premium similar to what happened to the GTX 1080 and GTX 1070.
The reason behind the highly possible price increase when the AMD Zen Core chips launches is because of the high demand. AMD has announced the chips in 2015 and PC builders have been anticipating its release ever since especially now that the company has also launched the Polaris GPU line.
Intel has been dominating the processor market for a long while now due to their high-performance chips but some users still prefer AMD for their budget-conscious builds. Now, the AMD Zen promises to bring the same level or even higher performance at a hopefully lower price point.
AMD CEO Lisa SU has confirmed that high-end desktop systems with the Zen Core processors will be available in the last quarter of 2016 but they will be very limited, PC World has learned. This could mean that there will also be a supply issue that retailers and scalpers would probably benefit from just like what happened to the GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 cards which were always short in stocks.
For those who can wait, Su said that the steady shipments of AMD Zen desktop systems will start in 2017. This is after taking into account the PC manufacturers and partners that will carry the chip with their systems next year.
While AMD has not yet officially revealed the Zen variants, there have been some leaks that claim that there will be several chips for consumers and server-grade system. The leaks also show that there will be an AMD Zen chip with 32 cores presumably for servers, KitGuru reported.
One quad-core Zen chip is already expected to run at 2.8GHz and can be boosted up to 3.2GHz with 16 threads to handle CPU-intensive tasks. Another great feature is that the Zen chips can significantly cut down in power consumption when idle as it can just consume 5 watts of power if it is not really doing anything.
AMD is expected to launch the Zen core chips by the end of the year. However, the price may still be steep for early adopters as the supply can be scarce as the company's CEO has said.